Social media is a very public forum. The whole social media landscape can view negative commentary about your business. When this happens, people will judge you based on a number of factors:

• How soon did you respond?
• What was your response?
• What was your customer’s answer?
• What was the resolution?

Social media is all about a prompt  response and fast reply. People on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram literally live there. They are able to post in the morning, during breakfast, after dinner or in the middle of the night.

If you decide to have a business profile, you need to be ready to do the same. You might be of the opinion that no one will notice one negative review however people definitely will! And should you not react, they will draw a conclusion, that you don’t care about your customers and your PR.

Four Principles for Dealing With Negative Social  Media Feedback

Monitor Your Social Media Accounts

Be careful and watch out for all mentions of your company, people, products as well as brands. Do this with a programme such as Google Alerts as well as other services on the market.

Be prompt to answer

The reason why people post negative comments online is because they don’t think they’re being listened to. This means that they get very angry. Some people do this just to warn their friends off of using, what they think, is a bad product.  The more social media-savvy ones will post hateful comments to hurt you as well as to force you to notice them.

Speed is critical. Acknowledge the customer’s challenges as quickly as you can before it gets out of hand and damages your brand. There doesn’t necessarily need to be an immediate solution but follow this up with concrete actions.

See it from the customer’s point of view

Nine times out of ten, customers don’t know or care about what has caused them problems. It’s not relevant them that your supplier dropped you or that a delivery was sent to the incorrect office. All they are aware of is the inconvenience it’s passed onto them and, in all likelihood, their customers.

Countless companies begin the process of speaking with an angry customer by giving all the excuses for why it occurred. These may be entirely true but the customer won’t be concerned with this. All it will seem like is that the business is trying to shift the blame. In the world of social media, this can be extremely dangerous.

Begin every interaction from the customer’s viewpoint:

• What happened to them?
• What it meant?
• What can be done to make amends?

Take it off social media

Social media platforms are not be the best space actually resolve complex issues. Being a public forum may make it difficult for an angry customer to  listen to reason.

Offer to pick up the conversation in a suitable setting.  This may be via phone, email or an existing support forum online. Doing this shouldn’t be an attempt to silence the critics. This type of action is simply to help them where it makes sense and to give their comments the time of day that it deserves.

When we say that you should take the conversation offline doesn’t means that you should delete the previous conversation. It is better for people to see your constructive response to the negative comment as opposed to getting buried in messages accusing you of curating out all the negative social media comments.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

The world of social media has allowed people to become publishers. As opposed to traditional publications, where there is an editor who vets all comments, people are able to publish on social media without this. The Digital School of Marketing’s Social Media Marketing Course will show you how to engage with social media in the proper manner for your business. For more information, follow this link.